Have you ever had a report that was sorted, grouped, and met every requirement? Assuming you did, have you ever had someone call you up and ask for your perfect report exported to Excel and then sorted in a different fashion? Maybe they just want the raw data and not all the groups and formatting? OK, this can be accomplished with a little work, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a user export option to accomplish this task?

The current SSRS “Excel Export” option exports the groups and header information. If you just want the raw data, it may be pretty hard to get it. Grouping presents a barrier for others to work with the exported data from this report. Note how the groups are shown in the report below.

Grouped Report

Once you have the grouped report, you can use the “Excel Export” functionality to export it to Excel. Notice how the groups, subtotals, headings, etc. all stay in the exported report. While this is sometimes desirable, it makes it difficult or almost impossible to sort the data in some other way.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have another Excel export option? One that allows you to export just the data so that it can be reviewed, sorted, filtered, etc. for the user’s needs? The “Excel Unformatted Export” is a way to accomplish this need. Basically, you select the “Excel Unformatted Export” option in the Export dropdown and this custom code exports the data only. See the example below of the same data exported from the report by the “Excel Unformatted Export”.

Watch the SSRS – Excel Unformatted Export video in action. Notice how the formatting, report headers and grouping issues have disappeared. This is a great option for those of you that may want to export just the data and not all of the formatting. Notice in the video that a secondary table can be used as part of the export features to allow for even more columns to be added to the exported data.